


We Are Not Alone In Universe, NASA Scientists Say

by MWI



Category: Young Avengers
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Parent Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 09:12:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1977234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MWI/pseuds/MWI
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The after-party of the Young Avengers' huge, gigantic, messed-up way of stopping a parasitic invasion is alright. Great, even. Lots of good food and opportunities to dance.</p><p>The after-<i>after</i>-party is the part Tommy Shepherd can't wrap his head around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Are Not Alone In Universe, NASA Scientists Say

“So, okay, tell me that part again?”

It’s four in the morning and the new Young Avengers are all crowded into one booth at one particularly deserted all-you-can-eat buffet, an assortment of breakfast foods spread across their plates. America had opted for foods higher in calories and proven to be surprisingly picky when it came to what she was willing to tolerate as ‘diner food’, while Teddy was apparently dedicated to devouring everything and anything he could pry off of the buffet or Billy’s plate.

The only one who doesn’t have any food in front of him is Tommy, but with the amount of wild hand-waving he’s been doing, the group’s individually but collectively concluded that he would have just sent any plates of his own smashing against the wall. Things like that happen when Tommy gets excited.

“You reappeared,” David says, with more patience than the rest of them can muster. He’s only picking at what’s left of his food -- he’s three plates in and _tired_ in a way only Kate is, a way that’s born out of no superpowers and the sheer drive to keep up with superheroes who have them -- and he’s been fielding most of Tommy's questions so far.

“I reappeared!” Tommy throws his hands up, the abrupt motion dragging Billy’s cape with them, and he ignores the tired groans of protest when the edge of said cape lands directly in Teddy’s latest plate of eggs. “I was gone, and now I’m back, and I was gone for a couple of entire _months_ , and I’m here again, and _I was gone for months_!”

“Are you upset?” Out of all of them, America’s been keeping the closest eye on how Tommy seems to be on the verge of something incredibly unpleasant in a three mile radius, but Kate’s the one that voices the question.

“No, no, it’s cool, it’s fine!” Tommy’s leg is vibrating so fast that the waiter glances up from the other side of the room. “Months! Wow! Gone for _months_! Don’t know _anything_ about it!”

The whole table lapses into an uncomfortable silence, glancing at each other while they try to decide what to do about Tommy’s leg making a name for itself on the Richter scale, until Noh-Varr coughs into his hand.

“ _I NEED TO TAKE A WALK_ ,” Tommy shouts at David’s unfinished ham, vanishing outside before the rest of the group can even blink. He knocks down that waiter on his way out, the team guesses from the way the man is laying on the floor in shock, and Kate quickly scoots out from the booth to make nice with the restaurant owners and try to pull whatever superheroic bonus points she can out of the already weary staff.

They all sit there in silence for a couple of seconds, the clock ticking away as a way of totaling up their sum lack of knowledge on how the hell to deal with a Tommy Shepherd on the verge of a breakdown, until David slides out of the other end of the booth and stands up.

Without much of a fuss, they all let him go -- even Billy, who’s been staring at Tommy in awed relief just about as much as he’d been staring at Teddy. Now, Billy lowers his gaze to the table, doesn’t say anything, lets David get up to solve a problem Billy’s pretty sure he would only make worse and nobody else even knows how to try to fix. Tommy’s always played things down and built jokes around them enough that maybe they all stopped treating him like an adult.

David looks at them, looks at the door, and inclines his head.

“You’re a team,” he says, folding his arms. “You followed him across most of the multiverse -- he’s one of you, right?”

“A Young Avenger,” America says. The rest of the group slowly drags themselves to meeting David’s eyes, some of them in curiosity, some of them in terror.

“Tommy’s a Young Avenger,” David repeats. “I don’t know what that means to you. But I know what being a part of the X-Men meant -- means -- to the X-Men. Someone makes sure we’re okay. And you don’t have adults to do it for you like the X-Men do, because the adults seem to mess things up whenever you guys are around.”

America snorts, the barest of grins poking through her exhaustion, and everyone’s guards drop just enough for them to take real stock of what David’s saying.

He shifts his feet and raises an eyebrow. “So who’s going?”

\- - -

In the end, it takes fifteen minutes and a promise to buy the rest of the group some Twizzlers that seals Teddy’s role as the resident Tommy retriever.

Some of Teddy’s adrenaline has worn off, too, the exhilaration of being rescued and spending the next few days in a chaos of recovery finally bringing everything all down to home at long last. Teddy’s been able to keep going, staggering on the legs he’s got; he knows it isn’t a permanent solution, but it’s what he got, and he figures it’ll help him get where Tommy’s coming from.

The party and the rescue and the breakfast and the torture by someone wearing his mother’s face are all blending together into one mess, and Teddy’s over and done with his transformation into what most people think of as their friendly neighborhood Hulkling before he even realizes he’s shifting. He’s not sure which is going to freak Tommy out more, but maybe he can work that out while he goes, since that’s all he’s been doing for years and it’s working passably well so far.

Teddy finds Tommy in a playground across the street from the occupied buffet restaurant, sitting on the swings like a kid whose parent never showed up to take them home from school. Even though Tommy could have run miles away by the time Teddy took a step out of the diner, he doesn’t move. The bright green of his costume is almost gaudy in the darkness, Teddy thinks, but he realizes that his armored skin is not quite the same color as Tommy’s costume, and there’s something comforting in that near-match that makes him pick up his pace in the hopes that this won’t go so badly after all.

“Do you want me to push you on the swings?”

Tommy looks up, looks back at his feet, shrugs with a little too much force crammed into it.

“I’m not a kid,” he mumbles.

“I push Billy on the swings all the time.”

Seeming to consider this, Tommy glances sidelong at the monkey bars. With the patience that comes so naturally to him maybe 90% of the time struggling when he needs it most, he realizes he’s running on fumes, and Teddy makes one last bid to help Tommy put himself back together again.

“I don’t think I ever told you about my mom.”

Tommy’s eyes widen -- and suddenly the monkey bars aren’t as interesting as Teddy.

“Nope.” The casual admittance comes out laced with too much of a strain, Tommy’s voice creaking like it’s a wooden floorboard that’s gotten more use than it could ever stand.

“She worked really hard. All the time, no matter what, she was constantly looking for work to do.” The images are almost too bright in Teddy’s memory. He digs his nails into his armor hard enough to give it a run for its money. “I don’t -- think she knew how to relax. She was always, always, always working, and because she cared about me, she never told me how hard she worked. Even when I thought she wasn’t doing anything, she was.”

The swingset shudders a little, but to Teddy’s eyes, Tommy is sitting perfectly still.

“I really appreciated her. I don’t think I told her that enough -- she was -- I wish she had told me, so I could have helped.”

Everything in the playground is completely silent for a minute, the kind of silent that comes with kids from a big city stepping into a quiet farm town for the first time. Its swingset trembles, then stills, then trembles so fast it might actually come apart.

But it doesn’t, and neither does Tommy.

“Push me,” he says, eyes not quite sparkling but echoing with faint shadows of his usually-boundless enthusiasm. That’ll come back in its own time, Teddy knows, but baby steps. Tommy’s trying to find a middle ground and that’s good enough for him.

“Am I even going to be able to keep up with you?” Teddy asks, clumsily weaving around the unoccupied swings on his tip-toes.

Emphatically, Tommy thumps his feet against the ground, and full-body _leans_ back to stare at Teddy with his hair dangling against the dirt.

“Won’t know until you try!”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a Huffington Post article by Sara Gates on the future of the universe! It's pretty cool, [check it out](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/15/we-are-not-alone-in-universe-nasa-habitable-planets_n_5588455.html).


End file.
